A Companion to Free Will E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Blackwell Companions to Philosophy
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 1497

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Provides a comprehensive, cutting-edge, and accessible accompaniment to various narratives about free will

A Companion to Free Will is an indispensable resource for anyone interested in the philosophy of free will, offering an authoritative survey of perennial issues and contemporary debates within the field. Bringing together the work of a diverse team of established and younger scholars, this well-balanced volume offers innovative perspectives and fresh approaches to the classical compatibility problem, moral and legal responsibility, consciousness in free action, action theory, determinism, logical fatalism, impossibilism, and much more.

The Companion’s 30 chapters provide general coverage of the discipline as well as an in-depth exploration of both CAP (Classical Analytic Paradigm) and non-CAP perspectives on the problem of free will and the problem of determinism—raising new questions about what the free will debate is, or should be, about. Throughout the book, coverage of modern exchanges between the world’s leading philosophers is complemented by incisive commentary, novel insights, and selections that examine compatibilist, libertarian, and denialist viewpoints.

• Offers a balanced presentation of conflicting theories and ongoing debates about the nature, existence, and implications of free will
• Explores the role of scientific advances and empirical methods in contributing to discourses on free will and action theory
• Reviews new developments in longstanding arguments between compatibilist and incompatibilist approaches to free will including those that question this way of framing the debate and critique the standard terminology
• Discusses descriptive, revisionary, and pragmatic approaches for defining key concepts and addressing compatibility problems surrounding free will
• Considers various issues of moral responsibility and philosophical approaches to the problem of free will in new ways

Part of the acclaimed Blackwell Companions to Philosophy series, A Companion to Free Will is essential reading for undergraduate and graduate students of philosophy, professional philosophers and theorists, and interested novices alike.

Leseprobe

Blackwell Companions to Philosophy

This outstanding student reference series offers a comprehensive and authoritative survey of philosophy as a whole. Written by today’s leading philosophers, each volume provides lucid and engaging coverage of the key figures, terms, topics, and problems of the field. Taken together, the volumes provide the ideal basis for course use, representing an unparalleled work of reference for students and specialists alike. For the full list of series titles, please visit wiley.com.

1. The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy, Second Edition Edited by Nicholas Bunnin and Eric Tsui‐James

2. A Companion to Ethics Edited by Peter Singer

3. A Companion to Aesthetics, Second Edition Edited by Stephen Davies, Kathleen Marie Higgins, Robert Hopkins, Robert Stecker, and David E. Cooper

4. A Companion to Epistemology, Second Edition Edited by Jonathan Dancy, Ernest Sosa, and Matthias Steup

5. A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy

(two-volume set), Second Edition Edited by Robert E. Goodin and Philip Pettit

6. A Companion to Philosophy of Mind Edited by Samuel Guttenplan

7. A Companion to Metaphysics, Second Edition Edited by Jaegwon Kim, Ernest Sosa, and Gary S. Rosenkrantz

8. A Companion to Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory, Second Edition Edited by Dennis Patterson

9. A Companion to Philosophy of Religion, Second Edition Edited by Charles Taliaferro, Paul Draper, and Philip L. Quinn

10. A Companion to the Philosophy of Language, Second Edition (two-volume set) Edited by Bob Hale and Crispin Wright

11. A Companion to World Philosophies Edited by Eliot Deutsch and Ron Bontekoe

12. A Companion to Continental Philosophy Edited by Simon Critchley and William Schroeder

13. A Companion to Feminist Philosophy Edited by Alison M. Jaggar and Iris Marion Young

14. A Companion to Cognitive Science Edited by William Bechtel and George Graham

15. A Companion to Bioethics, Second Edition Edited by Helga Kuhse and Peter Singer

16. A Companion to the Philosophers Edited by Robert L. Arrington

17. A Companion to Business Ethics Edited by Robert E. Frederick

18. A Companion to the Philosophy of Science Edited by W. H. Newton‐Smith

19. A Companion to Environmental Philosophy Edited by Dale Jamieson

20. A Companion to Analytic Philosophy Edited by A. P. Martinich and David Sosa

21. A Companion to Genethics Edited by Justine Burley and John Harris

22. A Companion to Philosophical Logic Edited by Dale Jacquette

23. A Companion to Early Modern Philosophy Edited by Steven Nadler

24. A Companion to Philosophy in the Middle Ages Edited by Jorge J. E. Gracia and Timothy B. Noone

25. A Companion to African–American Philosophy Edited by Tommy L. Lott and John P. Pittman

26. A Companion to Applied Ethics Edited by R. G. Frey and Christopher Heath Wellman

27. A Companion to the Philosophy of Education Edited by Randall Curren

28. A Companion to African Philosophy Edited by Kwasi Wiredu

30. A Companion to Rationalism Edited by Alan Nelson

31. A Companion to Pragmatism Edited by John R. Shook and Joseph Margolis

32. A Companion to Ancient Philosophy Edited by Mary Louise Gill and Pierre Pellegrin

35. A Companion to Phenomenology and Existentialism Edited by Hubert L. Dreyfus and Mark A. Wrathall

39. A Companion to the Philosophy of Biology Edited by Sahotra Sarkar and Anya Plutynski

41. A Companion to the Philosophy of History and Historiography Edited by Aviezer Tucker

43. A Companion to the Philosophy of Technology Edited by Jan‐Kyrre Berg Olsen, Stig Andur Pedersen, and Vincent F. Hendricks

44. A Companion to Latin American Philosophy Edited by Susana Nuccetelli, Ofelia Schutte, and Otávio Bueno

45. A Companion to the Philosophy of Literature Edited by Garry L. Hagberg and Walter Jost

46. A Companion to the Philosophy of Action Edited by Timothy O’Connor and Constantine Sandis

47. A Companion to Relativism Edited by Steven D. Hales

50. A Companion to Buddhist Philosophy Edited by Steven M. Emmanuel

52. A Companion to the Philosophy of Time Edited by Heather Dyke and Adrian Bardon

64. A Companion to Experimental Philosophy Edited by Justin Sytsma and Wesley Buckwalter

65. A Companion to Applied Philosophy Edited by Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, Kimberley Brownlee, and David Coady

70. A Companion to Nineteenth-Century Philosophy Edited by John Shand

71. A Companion Atheism and Philosophy Edited by Graham Oppy

78. A Companion to Free Will Edited by Joseph Campbell, Kristin M. Mickelson, and V. Alan White

A Companion to Free Will

Edited by

Joseph Campbell, Kristin M. Mickelson, and V. Alan White

This edition first published 2023

© 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by law. Advice on how to obtain permission to reuse material from this title is available at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

The right Joseph Campbell, Kristin M. Mickelson, and V. Alan White of to be identified as the authors of the editorial material in this work has been asserted in accordance with law.

Registered Office

John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, USA

Editorial Office

111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, USA

For details of our global editorial offices, customer services, and more information about Wiley products visit us at www.wiley.com.

Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some content that appears in standard print versions of this book may not be available in other formats.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty

The contents of this work are intended to further general scientific research, understanding, and discussion only and are not intended and should not be relied upon as recommending or promoting scientific method, diagnosis, or treatment by physicians for any particular patient. In view of ongoing research, equipment modifications, changes in governmental regulations, and the constant flow of information relating to the use of medicines, equipment, and devices, the reader is urged to review and evaluate the information provided in the package insert or instructions for each medicine, equipment, or device for, among other things, any changes in the instructions or indication of usage and for added warnings and precautions. While the publisher and authors have used their best efforts in preparing this work, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this work and specifically disclaim all warranties, including without limitation any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives, written sales materials or promotional statements for this work. The fact that an organization, website, or product is referred to in this work as a citation and/or potential source of further information does not mean that the publisher and authors endorse the information or services the organization, website, or product may provide or recommendations it may make. This work is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a specialist where appropriate. Further, readers should be aware that websites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read. Neither the publisher nor authors shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Campbell, Joseph - editor.

Title: A companion to free will / edited by Joseph Campbell, Kristin M. Mickelson, and V. Alan White.

Description: Hoboken, NJ, USA : Wiley Blackwell, [2023] | Series: Blackwell companions to philosophy | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2022040331 (print) | LCCN 2022040332 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119210139 (hardback) | ISBN 9781119210153 (epdf) | ISBN 9781119210160 (epub) | ISBN 9781119210177 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Free will and determinism.

Classification: LCC BJ1461 .C54 2023 (print) | LCC BJ1461 (ebook) | DDC 297.2/27--dc23/eng/20221103

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022040331

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022040332

Cover image: © Rosenwald Collection/Wikimedia

Cover design by Wiley

Set in 10/12.5pt Photina by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd, Pondicherry, India

For Ella Mae (Moore) White who modeled φίλος and σοφῶς in life

Contents

Cover

Series Page

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

List of Contributors

Acknowledgments

1 Introduction, Wiley Companion to Free Will

Part I Preliminaries

2 Logical and Theological Fatalism

3 Causal Determinism

4 (In)compatibilism

5 Agent Causation

6 Obligation and Moral Responsibility

7 Perfect Freedom

Part II Compatibility Problems

8 The Consequence Argument and the Mind Argument

9 Manipulation and Direct Arguments

10 Freedom and Time Travel

11 Divine Freedom

12 Denialism

13 Revisionism

Part III The Science of Free Will

14 How the Laws Constrain: Causation, Counterfactuals, and Free Will

15 Free Will and Implicit Attitudes

16 The Role of Consciousness in Free Action

17 neuroscience

18 A Defense of natural Compatibilism

19 Libertarianism

Part IV Moral Responsibility

20 Children and Moral Responsibility

21 The epistemic Condition of Moral Responsibility

22 Forgiveness and the emotions

23 Free Will and Moral Luck

24 Basic Desert and the Appropriateness of Blame

25 Criminal Responsibility

Part V The Future

26 The experience of Free Agency

27 The Future of the Causal Quest

28 Free Will and Reference

29 Meaning in Life and Free Will skepticism

30 Free Will: Looking Ahead

31 Epilogue: Free Will Zombies

Index

End User License Agreement

List of Tables

CHAPTER 18

Table 18.2 Mean and SDs...

List of Illustrations

CHAPTER 03

Figure 3.1 A Simple Example...

Figure 3.2 Example of a...

Figure 3.3 Illustration of a...

Figure 3.4 Illustration of logically...

Figure 3.5 A simplified spacetime...

Figure 3.6 A minimal logically...

Figure 3.7 An abstract illustration...

Figure 3.8 A minimally logically...

CHAPTER 17

Figure 17.1 The Readiness Potential.

CHAPTER 18

Figure 18.1 Folks as natural...

Figure 18.2 Nichols and Knobe’s...

Figure 18.3 Nahmias and Murray’s...

Figure 18.4 Mediation analysis by...

Figure 18.5 Rose and Nichols’...

Figure 18.6 Causal models selected...

Figure 18.7 Nadelhoffer and...

CHAPTER 28

Figure 28.1 The tree of...

Figure 28.2 Free will in...

Guide

Cover

Series Page

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Table of Contents

List of Contributors

Acknowledgments

Begin Reading

Index

End User License Agreement

Pages

i

ii

iii

iv

v

vi

vii

viii

ix

x

xi

xii

xiii

xiv

xv

xvi

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

50

51

52

53

54

55

56

57

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

72

73

74

75

76

77

78

79

80

81

82

83

84

85

86

87

88

89

90

91

92

93

94

95

96

97

98

99

100

101

102

103

104

105

106

107

108

109

110

111

112

113

114

115

116

117

118

119

120

121

122

123

124

125

126

127

128

129

130

131

132

133

134

135

136

137

138

139

140

141

142

143

144

145

146

147

148

149

150

151

152

153

154

155

156

157

158

159

160

161

162

163

164

165

166

167

168

169

170

171

172

173

174

175

176

177

178

179

180

181

182

183

184

185

186

187

188

189

190

191

192

193

194

195

196

197

198

199

200

201

202

203

204

205

206

207

208

209

210

211

212

213

214

215

216

217

218

219

220

221

222

223

224

225

226

227

228

229

230

231

232

233

234

235

236

237

238

239

240

241

242

243

244

245

246

247

248

249

250

251

252

253

254

255

256

257

258

259

260

261

262

263

264

265

266

267

268

269

270

271

272

273

274

275

276

277

278

279

280

281

282

283

284

285

286

287

288

289

290

291

292

293

294

295

296

297

298

299

300

301

302

303

304

305

306

307

308

309

310

311

312

313

314

315

316

317

318

319

320

321

322

323

324

325

326

327

328

329

330

331

332

333

334

335

336

337

338

339

340

341

342

343

344

345

346

347

348

349

350

351

352

353

354

355

356

357

358

359

360

361

362

363

364

365

366

367

368

369

370

371

372

373

374

375

376

377

378

379

380

381

382

383

384

385

386

387

388

389

390

391

392

393

394

395

396

397

398

399

400

401

402

403

404

405

406

407

408

409

410

411

412

413

414

415

416

417

418

419

420

421

422

423

424

425

426

427

428

429

430

431

432

433

434

435

436

437

438

439

440

441

442

443

444

445

446

447

448

449

450

451

452

453

454

455

456

457

458

459

460

461

462

463

464

465

466

467

468

469

470

471

472

473

474

475

476

477

478

479

480

481

482

483

484

485

486

487

488

489

490

491

492

493

494

495

496

497

498

499

500

501

502

503

504

505

506

507

508

List of Contributors

Mark Balaguer is professor of philosophy at California State University, Los Angeles. He is the author of four books – Platonism and Anti-Platonism in Mathematics (Oxford University Press, 1998), Free Will as an Open Scientific Problem (MIT Press, 2010), Free Will (MIT Press, 2014), and Metaphysics, Sophistry, and Illusion: Toward a Widespread Non-Factualism (Oxford University Press, 2021). He has also published numerous articles on a wide range of philosophical topics in journals such as Mind, Nous, and Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.

Joseph Campbell is professor of philosophy in the School of Politics, Philosophy, and Public Affairs at Washington State University. He is co-founder of the Inland Northwest Philosophy Conference and has helped organize scores of philosophy conferences and public events. Professor Campbell has edited nine books as well as numerous papers for the Journal of Ethics, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and Philosophical Studies. He is the recipient of the Marian E. Smith Faculty Achievement Award and the Honors Thesis Advisor Award.

Justin Capes is assistant professor of philosophy in the School of Humanities and Science at Flagler College and an Associate Editor for the Journal of Ethics. He writes on topics in moral philosophy and the philosophy of action, especially those having to do with free will and moral responsibility. His published work on these issues has appeared in journals such as Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Philosophical Studies, American Philosophical Quarterly, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, Erkenntnis, Social Philosophy & Policy, among others. He is currently in the process of finishing a book defending the much-debated Principle of Alternative Possibilities.

Florian Cova is a visiting assistant professor at University Geneva, Switzerland. As an experimental philosopher, his research is at the intersection between philosophy and cognitive science and explores how we think about a multitude of philosophical issues: aesthetics, free will, intentional action, or morality. His current work investigates people’s conceptions of the meaning of life and the role emotions play in our search for a meaningful life. He is the coeditor of Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Aesthetics and has published in journals including Consciousness & Cognition, Mind and Language, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Philosophical Psychology, Philosophical Studies and the infamous Asian Journal of Medicine and Health.

Oisín Deery is ARC DECRA fellow and lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at Macquarie University, Sydney, and assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy, York University, Toronto. His research is primarily in the philosophy of mind and action. He is currently working on issues in artificial intelligence, including ethical issues related to agency, for a three-year research project funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC). His monograph, Naturally Free Action, appeared in 2021 with Oxford University Press. In 2013, he published a coedited volume with Oxford University Press, The Philosophy of Free Will: Essential Readings from the Contemporary Debates. His articles have appeared in Philosophical Studies, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Synthese, and Philosophical Psychology.

Laura W. Ekstrom is Francis S. Haserot Chancellor professor of philosophy at William & Mary. She is a graduate of Stanford University (B.A.) and the University of Arizona (PhD). Her books include God, Suffering, and the Value of Free Will (Oxford University Press, 2021) and Free Will: A Philosophical Study (Westview Press, 2000). Her articles on autonomy, moral responsibility, causation, chance, free will, compassion, and suffering have been published in academic journals including Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Synthese, The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, American Philosophical Quarterly, Philosophical Studies, Midwest Studies in Philosophy, and Australasian Journal of Philosophy, as well as in edited collections published by Blackwell, Routledge, Oxford University Press, and Cambridge University Press.

Alicia Finch is associate professor of philosophy at Northern Illinois University. Her research has focused on the metaphysics of free will and moral responsibility, and she has taught courses in metaphysics, meta metaphysics, philosophy of religion, moral psychology, ancient philosophy, feminism, and the philosophy of race. Prior to joining NIU’s faculty, she was a post-doctoral research fellow at the Notre Dame Center for Philosophy of Religion and assistant professor of philosophy at Saint Louis University. She received her B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science from the University of Missouri at Columbia, and her M.A. and PhD in Philosophy from the University of Notre Dame.

Meghan Griffith is professor of philosophy at Davidson College. She is interested in moral responsibility, free will, the metaphysics of agency, and other topics related to human action. She has published a number of journal articles and book chapters on these topics. She is the author of Free Will: The Basics, 2nd Edition (Routledge, 2022), and a co-editor of the Routledge Companion to Free Will (Routledge, 2017). Recent research focuses on the role our narrative capacities play in the development of morally responsible agency.

Ishtiyaque Haji is professor of philosophy at the University of Calgary. He has research interests in ethical theory, philosophy of action, metaphysics, and philosophical psychology. He is the author of Moral Appraisability (1998), Deontic Morality and Control (2002), (with Stefaan Cuypers) Moral Responsibility, Authenticity, and Education (2008), Freedom and Value (2009), Incompatibilism’s Allure (2009), Reason’s Debt to Freedom (2012), Luck’s Mischief (2016), The Obligation Dilemma (2019), and Obligation and Responsibility (2023).

Robert J. Hartman is an assistant professor of philosophy at Ohio Northern University. He works mainly on agency and responsibility, character and virtue, and philosophy of religion. Currently, he is writing a monograph titled Character and Free Will. He is the author of In Defense of Moral Luck: Why Luck Often Affects Praiseworthiness and Blameworthiness (Routledge 2017) and co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy and Psychology of Luck (Routledge 2019). His work also appears in journals such as Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Erkenntnis, Faith and Philosophy, Journal of the American Philosophical Association, Philosophical Studies, and Thought.

Brian Leftow is William P Alston professor of the philosophy of religion and co-director of the Rutgers Center for Philosophy of Religion, Department of Philosophy, Rutgers University. He is also an Emeritus Fellow of Oriel College Oxford. He is the author of Anselm’s Argument (OUP, 2022), God and Necessity (OUP 2012), Time and Eternity (Cornell, 1991), and well over 100 articles in philosophy of religion, metaphysics, and medieval philosophy. For 16 years he was Nolloth Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion, Oxford University, and a Fellow of Oriel.

Neil Levy is professor of philosophy at Macquarie University, Sydney, and a Senior Research Fellow at the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, University of Oxford. He is a wide-ranging philosopher, who has published books and articles on free will, social epistemology, applied ethics, philosophy of mind, and other topics. His major work on free will is Hard Luck: How Luck Undermines Free Will and Moral Responsibility (Oxford University Press, 2011).

Ken M. Levy is the Holt B. Harrison professor of law at LSU Law School in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He teaches courses in criminal law and has published articles in several areas, including free will and responsibility, criminal theory, and constitutional law. He recently published a book entitled Free Will, Responsibility, and Crime: An Introduction (Routledge, 2020).

Kenji Lota is a graduate student in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Miami. Before coming to the University of Miami, he completed his master’s degree in philosophy at Concordia University in Montreal. His research interests are in epistemology, philosophy of language, and philosophy of action. His current work explores different ways of understanding interrogative attitudes, the norms that govern those attitudes, and how it relates to free will and action. He has coauthored papers that will appear in Erkenntnis and Ergo.

Marilyn McCord Adams (1943–2017) spent the longest part of her career as a philosophy professor at the University of California–Los Angeles (1972–1993). She moved from there to the Divinity School at Yale, as professor of the history of Christian doctrine in the medieval and early modern periods (1993–2003). Crossing the ocean, she became the first woman to hold the post of Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford University – the first woman to hold that historic post. Her major books were William Ockham, in two volumes (1987), Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God (1999), Christ and Horrors: The Coherence of Christology (2006), and Some Later Medieval Theories of the Eucharist (2010).

Kelly McCormick is an associate professor of philosophy at Texas Christian University. Her research primarily concerns free will and moral responsibility, with special emphasis on the permissibility of blame and the variety of methodological issues that give rise to disagreement between eliminativists and preservationists. Her first monograph on these issues, The Problem of Blame: Making Sense of Moral Anger, will be published by Cambridge University Press in 2022. Her publications also appear in journals including Philosophical Studies, Social Philosophy and Policy, Criminal Justice Ethics, The Journal of Value Inquiry, and The Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy.

Alfred R. Mele is the William H. and Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy at Florida State University. He is the author of thirteen books and over 250 articles and editor of seven books. He is past director of two multi-million-dollar, interdisciplinary projects: the Big Questions in Free Will project (2010–13) and the Philosophy and Science of Self-Control project (2014–17). His latest book is Free Will: An Opinionated Guide (Oxford University Press, 2022). Free will is one of his favorite topics.

Kristin M. Mickelson earned her Ph.D. from the University of Colorado at Boulder and spent two years as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Gothenburg (Sweden) in the Lund-Gothenburg Responsibility Project. She is now an independent researcher who works on the metaphysics of free will (broadly construed), the logic of explanation, and moral luck. She is particularly interested in redressing anomalies and stalemates that emerged in the free-will debate during the degeneration of the classical analytic paradigm (CAP). Towards that end, she has developed an alternative (non-classical) way of framing the problem of free will – she calls it “The Paradox Paradigm” – which opens up new avenues of research by exposing the dialectical connections between famous paradoxes of control, including the paradox of (in)determinism, the paradox of self-creation, and the paradox of moral luck. Her published work appears in venues such as Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Philosophia, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, and Social Philosophy & Policy.

Eddy Nahmias is professor and Chair of philosophy at Georgia State University. His research is devoted to the study of human agency: what it is, how it is possible, and how it accords with scientific accounts of human nature. His primary focus is the free-will debate, including potential threats to free will posed by the sciences of the mind, and conversely, what these sciences can illuminate how free will works in humans. He has published over 40 articles in these areas, and is co-editor of The Natural Method: Essays on Mind, Self, and Ethics in Honor of Owen Flanagan and Moral Psychology: Historical and Contemporary Readings.

Shaun Nichols is professor of philosophy at Cornell University. His research concerns the psychological underpinnings of philosophical thought. He is the author of Sentimental Rules: On the Natural Foundations of Moral Judgment, Bound: Essays on Free Will and Moral Responsibility, and Rational Rules: Towards a Theory of Moral Learning, and he has published over 100 articles in academic journals in philosophy and psychology.

Derk Pereboom is the Susan Linn Sage Professor in the department of philosophy at Cornell University. His areas of research include free will and moral responsibility, philosophy of mind, and early modern philosophy, especially Kant. He is the author of Living without Free Will (Cambridge 2001), Consciousness and the Prospects of Physicalism (Oxford 2011), Free Will, Agency, and Meaning in Life (Oxford 2014), and Wrongdoing and the Moral Emotions (Oxford 2021). He has published articles on free will and moral responsibility, consciousness and physicalism, nonreductive materialism, philosophy of religion, and on Kant’s metaphysics and epistemology.

Robyn Repko Waller is a lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Sussex. Her primary research interests lie in philosophy of mind and philosophy of cognitive science. She has published papers on agency, free will, causation, moral responsibility, neuroethics, and biomedical ethics in journals such as the Monist, Philosophical Psychology, Grazer Philosophische Studien, Synthese, and the Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, as well as forthcoming chapters in academic press anthologies.

Philip Robichaud is associate professor of philosophy at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. His areas of research specialization are moral responsibility, value theory, and the ethics of behavioral interventions, such as nudges. He coedited with Jan Willem Wieland the edited volume Responsibility: The Epistemic Condition, and his journal publications have appeared in Ethics, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, The Monist, and Science and Engineering Ethics.

Saul Smilansky (D.Phil., Oxford) is a professor at the Department of Philosophy, University of Haifa, Israel. He works primarily on normative and applied ethics, the free will problem, and meaning in life. Currently he is working on the idea of “Crazy Ethics” where matters seem true (or at least plausible) yet absurd. He is the author of Free Will and Illusion (Oxford University Press 2000), 10 Moral Paradoxes (Blackwell 2007), and one hundred papers in journals and edited collections.

Hannah Tierney is an assistant professor in the philosophy department at the University of California, Davis. She has broad philosophical interests, and writes mainly on issues of free will, moral responsibility, and personal identity. Her publications appear in journals including Analysis, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Journal of Philosophy, and Philosophical Studies.

Manuel Vargas is professor of philosophy at the University of California San Diego. He is the author of Building Better Beings: A Theory of Moral Responsibility and a coauthor of Four Views on Free Will. He works on questions at the intersection of agency and morality, and on topics in the history of Latin American philosophy.

Leigh Vicens is associate professor of philosophy at Augustana University in Sioux Falls, SD. Her research interests include metaphysical and ethical questions related to human freedom and moral responsibility, and related topics in philosophy of religion such as divine providence and the problem of evil. She is the coauthor of God and Human Freedom with Simon Kittle (Cambridge University Press, 2019) and coeditor of Theological Determinism: New Perspectives with Peter Furlong (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). Her publications include articles in a number of journals, and she is currently Book Review Editor at Faith and Philosophy.

Kadri Vihvelin is professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California. She has a longstanding interest in puzzles about free will and freedom of action, and has defended controversial claims about both. About free will, she argues that the victim of Frankfurt’s counterfactual intervener retains free will despite his counterfactual shackles. About freedom of action, she argues that common sense is right and philosophical orthodoxy wrong: Lewis’s time traveling Tim really cannot kill Grandfather. Her book, Causes, Laws, and Free Will: Why Determinism Doesn’t Matter, was published in 2013 by Oxford University Press. Her work on topics at the intersection of metaphysics and ethics, including causation, dispositions, and the doing/allowing distinction, has appeared in The Journal of Philosophy, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, and Canadian Journal of Philosophy, among others.

Ryan Wasserman is professor of philosophy at Western Washington University. His main interests are in metaphysics, ethics, and the philosophy of language. He has published papers in many journals, including Mind, Noûs, Philosophical Quarterly, Philosophical Studies, and Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. He is also the author of Paradoxes of Time Travel (Oxford University Press, 2018) and the coeditor of Metametaphysics (Oxford University Press, 2008) and has written on various issues relating to free will.

V. Alan White is professor of philosophy Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay, Manitowoc Campus. He is the author of numerous articles in metaphysics as well as pedagogy, appearing in Analysis, Erkenntnis, Philosophy, The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Process Studies, and Teaching Philosophy, among many other journals and chapters in books. He also for many years has written and performed dozens of philosophical parodies on his internet site Philosophy Songs, where he invites feedback for “encouragement or forgiveness.” He was the 1996 recipient of a Carnegie/CASE teaching award as Wisconsin Professor of the Year, and in 2009 of the University of Wisconsin Colleges Chancellor’s Award for Excellence, presented in Madison, Wisconsin.

Philip Woodward is assistant professor of Philosophy at Niagara University. His research is predominantly in the philosophy of mind and philosophical anthropology, focusing especially on the connection between consciousness and various other aspects of personhood, including intentionality, rationality, and agency. For academic year 2021–2022 he was awarded a residential research fellowship at the Henry Center for Theological Understanding. His publications appear in journals such as Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Philosophical Psychology, and Phenomenology & Mind.

Jessica Wright is an ethicist and policy analyst interested in bias, responsibility, and health policy. She completed her PhD thesis in philosophy, Owning Implicit Attitudes, at the University of Toronto. She is currently working on questions at the intersection of ethics and health policy, with a focus on health equity.

Acknowledgments

The editors thank the contributors for their chapters, assistance, and patience. For written comments on chapters, the editors thank Mark Balaguer, Gregg Caruso, Taylor Cyr, Chris Franklin, Robert Hartman, Richard Holton, Benjamin Matheson, Michael McKenna, Philip Swenson, Kevin Timpe, Neal Tognazzini, Jason Turner, Leigh Vicens, and especially Neil Levy.

Joe Campbell thanks The Hayek Fund of the Institute for Humane Studies for a spring 2022 grant, and the School of Politics, Philosophy, and Public Affairs at Washington State University for several Summer Research Grants to help support work on this volume.

Lastly, the editors thank Wiley-Blackwell and their staff, especially Durgadevi Shanmugasundaram, Charlie Hamlyn, and Will Croft.

1 Introduction, Wiley Companion to Free Will

KRISTIN M., MICKELSON, JOSEPH CAMPBELL AND V. ALAN WHITE

Brackets are used to refer to chapters in this volume (e.g. [10] refers to Chapter 10 of the volume). A glossary of bolded terms is provided at the end of this chapter.

We wish this volume to be a sure companion to the study of free will, broadly construed to include action theory, moral and legal responsibility, and cohort studies feathering off into adjacent fields in the liberal arts and sciences. In addition to general coverage of the discipline, this volume attempts a more challenging and complementary accompaniment to many familiar narratives about free will. In order to map out some directions such accompaniment will take, in this introduction we anchor the thirty contributions to this volume in some common history from which they arise, and attempt to indicate where future work in free will and moral responsibility will–and has already begun to–depart from that history.

1 Preliminaries: Free Will and Determinism

The concept of free will is fraught with controversy, as readers of this volume likely know. Philosophers disagree about what free will is, whether we have it, what mitigates or destroys it, and what (if anything) it’s good for. Indeed, philosophers even disagree about how to fix the referent of the term ‘free will’ for purposes of describing and exploring these disagreements (Nichols [28]). What one person considers a reasonably neutral working definition of ‘free will’ is often considered question-begging or otherwise misguided by another. Such disputes make it difficult to summarize the problem of free will, roughly the debate over the nature and existence of free will, in a clear and uncontentious way. In generic terms, however, the two basic solutions to the problem of free will are free-willism, the view that we (ordinary humans) have free will, and free-will denialism, i.e. the view that we do not have free will (Smilansky [12]).1 As stated here, neither denialism nor free-willism constitutes a complete solution to the problem of free will; to be complete, a proposed solution must also tell us a convincing story about what free will is (what ‘free will’ means) and that, as it turns out, is a very difficult task indeed.

One historically popular way of approaching the problem of free will is to ask about the relationship between free will and determinism: “Does free will stand in relation R to determinism: yes or no?” This is just a template for a question, of course. To transform this template-question into a substantive question with a clear meaning, we need to flesh out the template’s free-will relatum, its determinism relatum, and give a precise value to relation R. There is, however, no uncontroversial way to do this. In addition to the standard difficulties raised by fixing the referent of ‘free will’, philosophers hold radically different views about what is – or should be – meant by the term 'determinism' (White [3], Vihvelin[14]; see also Beebee and Mele 2002, Shabo 2010), and they identify relations which are as substantively different as correlation and causation when characterising relation R (Mickelson [4]). In practical terms, then, it may be best to think of the problem of determinism as a loose collection of disagreements about how to best spell out and answer the template-question, and how (if at all) asking and answering such questions would help us to solve the problem of free will.

The term 'determinism' was ushered into the free-will literature in the 19th century, but the doctrine may be traced back to the Stoic’s naturalistic cause-and-effect theory of fate (Bobzien 1998, 2021), which may be contrasted with logical and theological varieties of fate which have also been of traditional interest vis-a-vis free will (Finch [2]). William James, in his influential “Dilemma of Determinism,” tells his audience that “no ambiguities hang about this word [determinism] or about its opposite, indeterminism” (James 1884). According to James, determinism “professes that those parts of the universe already laid down absolutely appoint and decree what the other parts shall be” such that the “future has no ambiguous possibilities hidden in its womb.” Indeterminism, says James, is true whenever “the parts have a certain amount of loose play on one another, so that the laying down of one of them does not necessarily determine what the others shall be” (James 1884). Put another way, traditional determinism (i.e. determinism as it was traditionally conceived within the free-will debate) is the doctrine that there is a causal or nomological necessity in nature which makes one unique future inevitable given what preceded it. Traditional indeterminism is the negation of traditional determinism; it is true if and only if it is false that one unique future is inevitable relative to any arbitrary moment in time (holding fixed the naturalistic factors which account for the evolution of the physical universe and the facts of the past, if any, relative to that time) (e.g. van Inwagen 1990, p. 277). Hereafter, we use 'determinism' as shorthand for traditional determinism and 'indeterminism' as shorthand for traditional indeterminism, unless stated otherwise.

Faced with the idea of determinism, many people, especially those working within the Christian tradition (Adams [7]), have argued that no one could exercise free will in a world at which this necessity-in-nature doctrine of predetermination is true; others–including the ancient Stoics–have disagreed. One popular way of tracking this age-old dispute has been to divide philosophers based on their answers to two questions: (1) “Is determinism true?” and (2) “Do we–ordinary humans–have free will?”. Those who answered “yes” to the first question were classified as determinists, and they were subdivided based on their preferred response to the second question. Determinists who answered “no” were classified as hard determinists, while those who answered “yes” were classified as soft determinists (James 1884). The determinists were contrasted primarily with libertarians, i.e. philosophers who answered “no” to the first question and “yes” to the second.2 The term 'hard' in hard determinism indicates that some species of denialism is true. Despite their substantive differences, the soft determinists and libertarians agreed that denialism is false, which is to say that they agreed that free-willism is true.

In an innovative move, a group of philosophers working in the so-called classical period of the free-will debate, c. 1965–1985 (van Inwagen 2017), shifted the focal point away from the question of whether determinism is true to more theoretical questions which (according to their diagnosis) lay just under the surface of the pre-classical taxonomy of free-will views. One question was singled out as particularly important:

Is there a conflict or tension between the very notions of free will and determinism, such that if determinism were true, it would follow that determinism-related factors, i.e. the causal and/or nomological factors described by determinism, preclude free will (as the hard determinists and libertarians propose) or is there no such conflict (as the soft determinists believed)?

To raise the same question in slightly different terms, we could say–following the popular practice of using “luck” as shorthand for factors beyond one’s control (Hartman [23], Mickelson [4])–that these theorists were focused on the narrow question of whether or not determinism-related causal luck poses a distinct threat to free will. The challenge of answering the question of whether determinism (i.e. determinism-related causal factors beyond one’s control, determinism-related causal luck) precludes human free will is now widely known as The Compatibility Problem.

The Compatibility Problem was initially nested within the dominant research paradigm of the classical period: the classical analytic paradigm (CAP) (Mickelson [4]). Among CAP’s defining background assumptions, the assumption of classical possibilism is especially significant. Classical possibilism may be understood as the conjunction of two claims: (1) the classicalaccountof free will is correct, i.e. free will is (some kind of) an ability to do otherwise, and (2) anthropocentric possibilism, the view that it is metaphysically possible for an ordinary human to exercise free will, is true (e.g. van Inwagen 1983, Clarke 2003, Vihvelin 2013, Mickelson [4]).

By assuming classical possibilism, CAP theorists (i.e. philosophers working within CAP) restricted the compatibility problem to the classical compatibility problem, roughly a debate about which possibilist interpretation of the ability to do otherwise is best. On the one hand, classical incompatibilists (e.g. Peter van Inwagen 1983) contend that a person exercises the ability to do otherwise (a.k.a. free will) when performing an action only if there is some kind of indeterministic leeway in the evolution of the physical world (see Smilanksy [12], Balaguer [19]).3 Since all classical theorists accept classical possibilism, classical incompatibilism comes bundled with the endorsement of a broadly libertarian account of free will.4 As such, it is easy for the classical incompatibilist to explain why there is a deep conceptual conflict or an antagonistic incompatibility relation between the notions of free will and determinism. Since determinism states that there are naturalistic factors (i.e. determinism-related factors) which eliminate all indeterministic leeway in the evolution of the world, to say that determinism is true is to say that the world includes factors which eliminate the type of indeterministic leeway (whatever type that may be) that an exercise of free will requires.5 On the other hand, classical compatibilists (e.g. Keith Lehrer 1990) argue that indeterministic leeway is not required to exercise the ability to do otherwise. According to the classical compatibilist, the mere fact that determinism-related factors rule out all indeterministic leeway does not mean–pace the classical incompatibilists–that determinism-related factors rule out the ability to do otherwise (a.k.a. free will). However, classical compatibilists do not merely reject the classical incompatibilists’ “causal factors” explanation for the purported fact that normal humans cannot act freely when determinism; they are also committed, given their assumption of classical possibilism, to a classical version of compossibilism, the view that it is metaphysically possible for an ordinary human to act freely in a world at which determinism is true (Mickelson [4]). As such, the classical compatibility problem may be summarized as the challenge of settling which of two views, classical (compossibilist) compatibilism or classical (broadly libertarian) incompatibilism, is correct.6

Challenges to CAP have given rise to other perspectives on the compatibility problem and to fundamentally different interpretations of the problem of determinism. Three challenges are worth noting, given their profound impact on the trajectory of the recent history of the free-will debate. Two of these challenges target the CAP assumption that classical possibilism is true, while the third challenges CAP’s implicit practice of framing the problem of determinism as a narrow dispute about the relationship between free will and causal luck.

The first major strike against classical possibilism came in the form of Harry Frankfurt’s influential criticisms of the classical (a.k.a. leeway) account of free will (Frankfurt 1969) specifically what are now known as “Frankfurt examples” (Haji [6]). By casting doubt on the classical conception of free will, Frankfurt examples motivated interest in non-classical accounts of free will, especially sourcehood accounts (Haji [6], Capes [9]). This, which is perhaps the most well-known critique of CAP’s background assumptions, was not considered a fatal flaw in the CAP approach to the problem of determinism. Rather, it led philosophers to think that the term ‘free will’ should not be narrowly defined to mean “an ability to do otherwise” in generic statements of the compatibility problem. In such contexts, ‘free will’ should instead be defined in a way that opens dialectical space for a lively debate about which account of free will is correct.

This shift in the working definition of ‘free will’ led to the popularization of the neo-classical compatibility problem, which is (at least superficially) just like the classical compatibility problem except that the term ‘free will’ is used more broadly. The neo-classical use of ‘free will’ allows that the classical account of free will may be true, but it also allows that some non-classical account (e.g. a sourcehood account) may be correct. The two recognized solutions to the neo-classical compatibility problem are neo-classical incompatibilism, the view that is metaphysically impossible because determinism-related factors undermine free will (neo-classically defined) in worlds at which determinism is true, and neo-classical compatibilism, the view that determinism-related factors pose no threat to free will and it is metaphysically possible for an ordinary human to exercise free will (neo-classically defined) in a world at which determinism is true.7 Criticism of the classical definition of ‘free will’ also contributed to the centralization of moral responsibility in neo-classical and non-classical definitions of the term ‘free will’ (Haji [6], McCormick [24]), a point that we return to below (Section 4).8

As sourcehood accounts became mainstream, they helped to normalize the idea that, pace CAP theorists, anthropocentric possibilism may be false. While some source theorists, including Frankfurt, became neo-classical source compatibilists (arguing that it is possible for an ordinary human to satisfy the necessary source condition on free will even when determinism is true, from which it follows that determinism-related factors do not always undermine free will), other source theorists became neo-classical source incompatibilists (arguing that determinism-related factors preclude free will in virtue of keeping people from satisfying the source condition–as opposed to the classical ability-to-do-otherwise condition) on free will. Some of these neo-classical source incompatibilists, e.g. Derk Pereboom 2001, 2014, were also concerned about apparent threats to free will posed by indeterministic causal factors (i.e. indeterministic forms of causal luck). Such concerns led to the emergence of Pereboom’s hard source incompatibilism, a species of anthropocentric impossibilism which claims that it is metaphysically impossible for an ordinary human (i.e. someone like us, as we are here on Earth) to exercise free will on the grounds that, whether determinism is true or false, some kind of causal luck (i.e. causal factors beyond one’s control) ensures that no normal human satisfies the necessary source condition on free will.9 Since hard source incompatibilism clearly speaks against both tenets of classical possibilism–rejecting both the classical account of free will and the assumption of anthropocentric possibilism–it is a decisively non-CAP position.

To be clear, Pereboom’s hard source incompatibilism is not an example of full-blooded impossibilism, the unqualified view that it is impossible for anyone–even God (Adams [7]; Leftow [11])–to exercise free will. Pereboom is sympathetic to a broadly agent-causal (as opposed to event-causal) libertarian account of free will (e.g. Pereboom 2001, 2014; Vicens [5]) and this keeps him from endorsing unqualified impossibilism. Hard source incompatibilism is an influential view in part because it promises to provide a complete solution to the problem of free will: the “source” part tells us what free will amounts to and the “hard” part signals its endorsement of denialism. The hard source incompatibilist route to solving the problem of free will is attractive, in part, because it allows its proponents to adopt denialism without taking a stand on the truth-value of determinism.

The growing popularity of source accounts of free will has also raised the profile of philosophers who have been arguing for unqualified impossibilism. Among impossibilists (e.g. Galen Stawson 1986, Levy 2011, Mickelson 2019b), some argue for the radically anti-CAP view that the specific factors beyond our control which keep us from acting freely are not located in our environment (e.g. states in the remote past or the laws of nature) but are instead located entirely in facts about us. Drawing again on the language of “luck,” these source impossibilists contend that causal luck is irrelevant to free will. They claim, instead, that constitutive luck–roughly luck in the way that one is constituted, especially in regards to how one is mentally (at least in certain key respects), at the time of action–keeps people from acting freely, no matter what one’s environment is like. This constitutive-luck source impossibilism, like its rival hard (source) incompatibilism, provides a route to denialism which does not require us to resolve tricky empirical questions about whether determinism is true or false.

Since constitutive-luck source impossibilism is in direct conflict with all three of the CAP tenets discussed above, it is a paradigmatically non-CAP position. It should not be surprising, then, that this view defies classification in CAP-based terms (e.g. Vihvelin 2008, McKenna and Pereboom 2016, p. 151, Mickelson [4]). Since these impossibilists reject the compossibilist component of classical/neo-classical compatibilism, they are not “compatibilists” in any traditional sense; but these impossibilists are not “incompatibilists” in the traditional sense either, for they also reject the explanatory tenet of classical/neo-classical incompatibilism which identifies determinism-related factors (i.e. causal luck) as relevant to free will. Just as there is a clear sense in which constitutive-luck source impossibilism is both an anti-compatibilist and anti-incompatibilist position, there is also a sense in which it is both a compatibilist and incompatibilist position: it is incompatibilist insofar as it entails the modest incompossibilist tenet of traditional forms of incompatibilism, but compatibilist insofar as it denies that determinism-related factors pose a threat to free will (for further discussion, see Mickelson [4], 2015a, 2019b). Philosophers have yet to reach a consensus on whether–and, if so, how–to update CAP-based jargon so that it tracks non-CAP views.10

The chapters in this volume reflect a variety of classical, neo-classical, and non-classical perspectives on the problem of free will and the problem of determinism. While CAP remains a powerful and popular research framework, alternative approaches promise to raise new questions and inspire fruitful lines of inquiry. A solution to the problem of free will may still be far off, but these new developments should help free-will theorists push back against the common complaint that the free-will debate is still mired in a dialectical stalemate between “compatibilists” and “incompatibilists.”

2 Compatibility Concerns: The Arguments

From the perspective of CAP theorists, the problem of free will is just the problem of determinism, and the problem of determinism boils down to the question of whether the thesis of determinism is logically incompatible with the classical free-will thesis, i.e. the thesis that some ordinary human exercises free will (assuming the classical definition of ‘free will’) (Mickelson [4]). The worry, in general terms, is that a certain kind of necessity (determinism) is at odds with a kind of contingency (free will). Looked at in this way, CAP compatibility concerns are part of a family of traditional worries raised by predeterminisms, including not only well-known problems about determinism (Campbell and Lota [8]), God’s omniscience (foreknowledge) and the logical principle of bivalence (Finch [2]), but also eternalism (Buckareff 2019), providential determinism, and socio-economic determinism. Many of these predeterminisms involve commitments to scientific, religious, even political world views. For instance, a Catholic might be committed to providential determinism, or a Marxist to socio-economic determinism. This partly explains why some compatibility problems are worrisome to some people, but not to others. If the predeterminism is disconnected to one’s world view, it is easy to give it up. Once we consider compatibility problems broadly–as involving any number of predeterminisms in conflict with free will–it is likely each of us has a worrisome compatibility problem waiting to be revealed.

The problem of determinism remains a popular entry point to the problem of free will, but it is not the only framework which draws upon notions of luck (i.e. factors beyond our control) to raise pressing questions about the nature and existence of free will. Even if one were to show that the future is not perfectly predetermined–by God, the laws of nature, the axioms of logic, or anything else–one would not have thereby made the case for free will. Even if a world without a pre-established future must include some type of indeterminacy, it is by no means obvious which type of indeterminacy is required. This raises a new concern: perhaps the best arguments in the literature, when taken together, will support the conclusion that free will is impossible whether or not there is indeterminacy in the world and, hence, that denialism is true.

From the ancient Epicurean idea that free will might be found in the random “swerve” of Democritean atoms (Pereboom 2009, pp. 17–18) to the modern idea that free will is grounded in the (purportedly) probabilistic behavior of quantum particles (Kane 2003; Balaguer [19]), many people have argued for a tight connection between free will and causal indeterminacy. As we have seen, CAP theorists are committed to solving the problem of free will through a very particular characterization of the problem of determinism and, given their commitment to classical possibilism, classical incompatibilists are committed to a broadly libertarian interpretation of free will. However, even CAP theorists who are committed to a libertarian analysis of the ability to do otherwise respected the worry that causal indeterminacy might “hurt” one’s efforts to exercise free will. For example, van Inwagen’s “freakish demon” manipulation argument (van Inwagen 1983, pp. 130–134) was the first of the so-called manipulation arguments (Capes [9], Mickelson 2017) to raise serious concerns about the incompatibility of free will and indeterminism. The more renowned Mind argument raised the same concerns (Campbell and Lota [8]). (It is called the “Mind argument” because influential versions of it were published in the journal of that name.) The Mind argument “occurs in three forms” or “three closely related strands of argument that are often twisted together” (van Inwagen 1983, p. 126). All the strands begin with “a certain set of reflections on what the nature of free action must be if the incompatibilist is right,” e.g., supposing the world is causally undetermined but productive of free action.11

Van Inwagen notes there are structural similarities underlying the Mind Argument and the Consequence Argument, the most influential argument for classical incompatibilism, suggesting that if one is sound, then so must be the other (van Inwagen 1983, pp. 147–150; Campbell and Lota [8]). In broad strokes, the Consequence Argument is a seemingly simple conditional argument: If determinism is true, then everything we will ever do is a consequence of the laws of nature and states of the world in the remote past (prior to the existence of the first human); since we have no control over the past (Wasserman [10]) or the laws (Vihvelin [14]), we have no control–in just the sense picked out by ‘free will’–over anything we do. Yet, it seems not to matter much if we replace the laws of nature with probabilistic laws. Either way, we have “precious little free will” (van Inwagen 1989, p. 405).

As a CAP theorist, van Inwagen originally presented the Consequence Argument against the backdrop of CAP’s background assumptions, which places constraints on how we interpret this argument’s premises and conclusion. For example, the original CAP-based version of the Consequence Argument (hereafter, the Classical Consequence Argument) was specifically an argument for classical incompatibilism. That is, the Classical Consequence Argument concludes that it is impossible to exercise the ability to do otherwise picked out by the term ‘free will’ when determinism is true, from which it follows (given the CAP assumption of classical possibilism) that a libertarian interpretation of the ability to do otherwise must be correct. According to this libertarian account, indeterministic leeway is a prerequisite for exercising the ability to do otherwise, a.k.a. free will.

Here, then, we strike a tension at the core of the CAP program. The Classical Consequence Argument concludes that classical incompatibilism is true, and above we noted that some philosophers believe that there are structural similarities between the Classical Consequence Argument and the Mind argument which ensure that if one of these arguments is sound, then so is the other. However, if both of these arguments are sound, it means that people cannot act freely whether determinism is true or false–in which case classical possibilism, a defining background assumption of CAP, is false.12 The tension may indicate a problem with the assumption of classical possibilism, i.e. perhaps anthropocentric possiblism and/or the classical account of free will is incorrect (Campbell and Lota [8]). Not wanting to give up on such foundational CAP commitments, it is perhaps unsurprising that van Inwagen–an eminent CAP theorist–has responded to the apparent paradox within CAP by adopting mysterianism, the view that free will exists but it is a mystery (van Inwagen 1983, 1998, 2000).13 For those less committed to the CAP program, the best response to this tension may be less clear–though, minimally, it encourages us to explore other (neo-classical and non-classical) options.

The manipulation argument has become one of the most popular tools for exploring non-CAP approaches to the problem of free will (Capes [9]). Multiple-case manipulation arguments were already in play during the classical period, e.g. van Inwagen’s “freakish demon” argument targeted broadly libertarian accounts of free will (van Inwagen 1983, pp. 130–134) and Richard Taylor’s earlier “puppet” argument targeted compossibilist accounts of free will (Taylor 1963, p. 45). However, manipulation arguments are now used to support a wide variety of conclusions. For example, Derk Pereboom’s influential Four-Case Argument aims to establish neo-classical incompatibilism and to offer some support for the more specific source incompatibilist position that determinism-related causal factors preclude human free will by keeping people from satisfying the source condition on free will (Pereboom 2001, 2014). Other manipulation arguments are more thoroughly untethered from the CAP framework. For example, Alfred Mele’s revised Zygote Argument (Mele 2013, 2017, 2019) is distinctive insofar as it concludes to mere incompossibilism, the relatively modest non-explanatory claim that it is impossible for an ordinary human to act freely when determinism is true. Unlike Pereboom’s Four-Case Argument, Mele’s argument is completely silent about why